You Write....

I can't write "Linux@UK" single-handedley (and you would get pretty
bored if I did!). If you don't feel up to writing a full article then
making your point with a letter to the editor is a valuable contribution.
It may be that you disagree with a point that a contributor made in the
this issue or you want to bring some really great piece of software
for Linux to peoples attention. I would be pleased to hear from you -
by email if possible <mhouston@mh01.demon.co.uk>.
If not then please could you include the text
of your letter on a floppy disk? My copy typing skills are non existent!
Please include an S.A.E if you want the disk returned.

Our policy is to print email addresses of respondents unless they specificaly
request anonymity. If you submit a point of view by post please let me
know a contact address/phone number if you would like to receive any feedback
from our readers. Letters are edited for publication to tidy them up and remove
extraneous text.

Thank you for the first issue of Linux@UK. Generally, I though
it was a good read, but felt it has a fair way to go before it catches
up with the standard of `Linux Journal'. The articles by Zbigniew
Chamski and Simon Allen were particularly good.

One of the most common questions recently in the Linux
newsgroups has been `When I rebuild the kernel, why is my Linux image
so big and why doesn't it work?!' It would have been useful to add to
`Alec's Linux Slackware Notes' that zImage no longer ends up in the
top directory of the source tree, but in the arch/i386/boot/
directory.

The Lasermoon article entitles `Linux Kernelitus?' was
entertaining, but, I thought, potentially damaging to Linux. Their
major criticism of Linux seemed to be the rate at which new kernels
appear. They state that:

"[Linux will never be taken seriously] when the underlying
operating system kernel is changing so fast that accurate
testing is both impossible and pointless."

This is simply not true. Kernel version 1.2 has just been
released. Before that, there has not been an official release kernel
since V1.0.9 which was many many months ago; I forget the actual
date. All the 1.1.x kernels are development kernels. They are not
meant to be used by anyone who wants to use Linux for anything serious
and should not be touched by ISVs (Independent Software Vendors). If a
customer changes to a development kernel, then he/she should be
prepared for the fact that commercial software might not work. The
only people using development kernels should be those who are
interested in Linux for its own sake and they are unlikely to be
purchasing commercial software. If they are, then they should also be
competent enough to know how to set up Lilo to boot from alternative
versions of the kernel.

The absence of bigname software for Linux is nothing to do
with the evolution of the kernel. As always with the big commercial
companies, it's a chicken and egg situation getting them to relase
software for a new platform. The Commodore Amiga was a wonderful
example; despite having an operating system vastly superior to
MS-DROS/Windoze, it never took off in the commercial market place
because there was no software from the big companies (with the
exception of Wordperfect, which, at the time, has a vastly inferior
interface compared with wordprocessors developed especially for the
Amiga). The big companies wouldn't port there software because there
weren't any Amigas in the commercial marketplace.

Linux users need to pester the companies which produce those
big applications like Frame, Informix and Oracle. Tell them about
Linux; tell them there is a market for their software; even send them
old Linux CDs! Most of these companies have heard of Linux by now, but
they won't release software until they know there's a
marketplace. Some companies, like NAG who have release their
Fortran-90 compiler for Linux, are seeing the light. Let's help the
spread of Linux by asking companies for the software we want to see.

I am currently reading the Linux SIG and I have a few comments to make.

First the idea of local user groups seems a very good idea. Perhaps a letter
should be sent to linux-uk-discuss asking who would be interested in
going to these club meetings and in what area of the country they live.
I would be interested and I live in Portsmouth in Hampshire.

I would also be interested in the CD you mentioned. I expect most users
purchase copies of the Sunsite archives etc and therefore there would be
little use to include all this software on the disk.
What would be usefull would be to include all the updates to the software
since the last issue of the CD on the CD. The end user could then look for the
piece of software they wanted in the ls-lR file and from the file data they
would know which of your CD's the file is on.

The exception to this would be perhaps the .../slackware/NOT-FOR-COMMERCIAL-USE
directory as I have found that this tends to get omitted from most CD
distributions probably because there is no restriction on who can buy
the CD. As the SIG is a user club then this problem should not arrise. This
above mentioned directory holds many good pieces of software including the
latest releases of Mosaic.

Therefore the contents of the CD I would like to see are:-

Linux related news article archives.

Linux SIG archives.

Archives of all new additions to the Sunsite/TSX-11 sites.

The .../slackware/NOT-FOR-COMMERCIAL-USE directory at Sunsite.

Club orientated files.

Number 5 above would include such things as an english dictionary for
ispell, icons for use with
Mosaic, example configuration files...

After much persuasion here is a "letter to the editor" for your newsletter.
If it's too late for the first edition then I might like to replace it with
something else for the next. I assume you will edit it. Could you send me
a membership/subscription form?

I wish to have facilities available under Linux to perform company
accounts, financial planning, time management and mail merge (using TeX and a
client address database). I have all these under DOS.

I would very much prefer GPL software since I can then read and modify the
source code. I am a computer contractor and want these for my personal and
company use, though it is possible that in future I may charge to install
such software for clients.

I wonder whether any of your readers have similar needs or know of existing
free software? I am thinking of using Tcl/Tk for any front ends I write.
Could anyone recommend a free database package?

Last summer I bought a new PC with the intention of
getting to know Linux. Aston University were getting
rid of some boxed Victors that they no longer wanted
and the spec sounded really good; you know: 486DX33,
210MB and all that stuff. Indeed if they had a reason
for selling them cheap I have not yet found out what
it was. I got a CD ROM drive at the same time and when
I was given an internal modem as a leaving present I
put that in too. On a visit to the US I got a hand scanner
and I put that in; runs under DOS but you have to make
some sacrifices. Then I thought well, 210MB is a big
disk (by my standards) and how was I to back this up?
A Colorado Trakker internal tape drive seemed a good
solution and at this point I realised the awful truth;
the Victor is housed in an elegant slimline case and
already, with the machine only a couple of months old,
I had used up all its expansion capability - one bay
and three slots.

For a little more money you can get an external tape
drive that plugs into the printer port. Sorry, mate,
not with Linux;
it turns out that ftape
does not support writing via the parallel port. So I
posted a query to the newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc to
ask for suggestions. One person said I should get a
tower case and transfer all the works. A neat idea, but
my motherboard has the cards fitting horizontally so
to get more slots I would need to buy another motherboard.
Ah, but my video chips are built in to the motherboard
so I would have to buy a video card as well and by now
the solution is not sounding so good, even without
mentioning my three-year warranty.

Give away the scanner to a good home and use the slot
for a SCSI card. This from the US where they take SCSI
in their rangy stride and regard 1GB as a small disk. I
found this idea quite attractive, and it would provide
an easy expansion route for adding extra storage in the
future, but the cheapest SCSI tape drive is about 900
zlotys so it is an expensive way to solve the present
problem.

At work it's all networks nowadays so a colleague suggested
a network solution; get another PC and link it up with an
ethernet. All I need is a simple machine with lots of bays
and slots, two ethercards and 2m of coax and I get to keep
the scanner and the warranty. An unwanted and unloved 386SX
would do nicely.

Right - I'm off to my local computer auction on Sunday.
Tony Sumner
A.Sumner@reading.ac.uk

Editors Note:One of the beauties of Linux is that if one machine
gets too small for your needs you can buy another and another until you
have a network setup that does all the jobs you need! With Linux
there is no worry of having to buy more software for the new machine
(could be more than half the cost of adding another machine in some
situations). All the normal
thorny legal issues of networking and sharing software simply do not arise!